Dr. Campins – Analog Artist Digital World

At Live from Orlando, It’s Science Night Live! Out of this World Space Edition! at the Orlando Science Center, (777 E Princeton St, Orlando, FL 32803), Dr. Campins spoke about OSIRIS-REx, is an exploratory spacecraft which will intersect with asteroid Bennu to collect surface dust to be returned to Earth for analysis. He showed slides of the spacecraft’s sterile construction. The craft has been in it’s Outbound Cruise Phase since Sept. 8, 2016. Bennu is about 600 feet in diameter which means it rotates slow enough so that surface dust should be still intact..

It Completed Earth-Trojan Asteroid Search around the L4 Earth-sun Lagrange Point on Feb. 20, 2017. Although no new Earth Trojans were discovered,
the spacecraft’s camera operated flawlessly and demonstrated that it
could image objects two magnitudes dimmer than originally expected.

Completed six-month instrument calibrations in March 2017.

At Live from Orlando, It’s Science Night Live! Out of this World Space Edition, held at at Orlando Science Center, (777 E Princeton St, Orlando, FL 32803.) Dr. Campins spoke to guests at Science on a Sphere (the floating orb on Level 4) for about an hour before his official presentation talking about the OSIRUs-REx mission one-on-one with people. This mission sending a satellite to intercept an asteroid approaching to Earth. When the craft gets close enough an arm will extend and and slap the asteroid will raise particles which will then be Earth. The composition should give hints about the earliest history the solar system.

Dr. Campins instrumental in bringing the project to reality. target asteroid is named Bennu which is a B-type asteroid with a 500 meter
diameter. It completes an orbit around the Sun every 1.2
years and every 6 years comes very close to Earth.
These close encounters give Bennu a high probability of impacting Earth
in the late 22nd century. Bennu’s size, primitive composition, and
potentially hazardous orbit make it one of the most fascinating and
accessible Near-Earth Objects and the ideal OSIRIS-REx target asteroid.

A tall woman made hand shadow puppets on the globe as people asked questions mission.